Now the following is likely to be perceived as more of an overview rather than an all out demonstration for Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition Beta 2. So keep that in mind as you proceed.

Welcome to the Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition Beta 2 Guided Tour. We are excited to share key new features available in Visual Web Developer 2005 Express (hereafter, VWD) that will make Web development easier and more productive than ever before.

The Guided Tour is not intended be a comprehensive overview of VWD. However, after completing the Guided Tour you will be well on your way to building your own sophisticated Web sites without writing any code. What once took a Web application team days or weeks to complete will take you minutes. There is no better way to learn about VWD than to actually use the tools, so the balance of the Guided Tour is showing you how to build your own solutions.

When building VWD, Microsoft’s efforts were focused on increasing developer productivity. Key development activities that you once performed on almost every Web application are now part of VWD. For example, Internet Web site security is now completely rolled into VWD so you do not have to build your own security framework.

Remember that this is still Beta code. It is far superior to the bits that were delivered at the PDC 2003. However, if you do run into a problem that you can’t explain, then saving your work and re-starting VWD usually will fix it. [Read the rest]

Tags: beta, visual web developer, web development, code, developer productivity